Don Fabrizio Salina–Don Calogero Sedàra

The relationship between Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina, and Don Calogero Sedàra is shaped by class rivalry and political transition, but it does not remain simple antagonism. The Prince sees Sedàra’s wealth and influence as signs of the old aristocracy’s displacement; at the same time, he recognizes that the new order rewards exactly the practical power Sedàra possesses. Their connection through Tancredi Falconeri and Angelica Sedàra brings that conflict into the family, where suspicion, social calculation, and genuine human sympathy coexist.

Identity and the basis of the relationship

The Prince represents inherited rank, courtly habits, and scientific distinction. Sedàra is a local power-holder whose standing rests on practical achievement and influence. Their difference is not merely one of manners: the Prince regards the ascent of men like Sedàra as evidence that social authority is changing hands. Yet he cannot treat Sedàra as an outsider to his family’s future. Sedàra is Angelica’s father, and her relationship with Tancredi makes the two households prospective kin.

That connection turns an abstract class conflict into a personal one. The Prince must judge Sedàra both as a representative of a rising social group and as the father of the woman who shares Tancredi’s life. He can recoil from Sedàra’s priorities while still supporting the young couple and acknowledging that the old aristocratic world cannot simply exclude the new one.

Encounters under the old monarchy

The Prince’s earlier audiences with Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies establish the political world in which his inherited position once carried weight. At Caserta and other royal residences, he passed through elaborate rooms and waiting chambers before being admitted to the King. In their conversation, the King moved from family matters and praise of the Prince’s scientific reputation to questions about the Lieutenant-General of Sicily. The Prince answered cautiously rather than supplying intelligence, and the King’s friendliness gave way to displeasure before returning as a cordial mask at the audience’s end.

Leaving the palace, the Prince felt depressed by a familiarity that could not persuade him it was friendship, and by threats that did not seem to him like royal authority. He wondered what would replace the monarchy and suspected that a change of rulers might bring little more than a change in dialect. This skepticism helps explain why Sedàra’s ascent unsettles him: political transformation does not, in the Prince’s view, guarantee a transformation in the underlying pursuit of advantage.

The plebiscite and public authority

At Donnafugata’s plebiscite, the Prince went to the Town Hall with Father Pirrone and Don Onofrio Rotolo. He handed his yes vote to Sedàra, who was central to the local proceedings. The official tally announced by Sedàra was 515 voters, 512 votes cast, 512 yes votes, and no votes recorded against the proposal. The result presented unanimity, though it did not establish that the community’s political will had been freely or fully expressed.

After the count, Sedàra appeared before the unseen crowd with a tricolour sash and announced the figures. Celebrations followed, while the Prince’s unease persisted. His discomfort was not simply a defence of his own privileges: he understood that his class had emerged battered but still alive. The vote instead marked a larger transfer of public authority, in which local figures such as Sedàra could speak for the new political order and give its claims a visible, practical form.

The Senate proposal and the changing elite

When Cavaliere Aimone Chevalley di Monterzuolo visited to explain the proposed Senate appointments, he reported that the Prince’s name had been put forward for his ancestry, personal prestige, scientific merit, and conduct during recent events. The Prince questioned what a senator actually did, then listened as Chevalley described a chamber that would examine and debate laws and represent Sicily within the Kingdom. The Prince did not reject the new state’s importance; he said that he would have accepted an honorific distinction and that unity should not be weakened by an appearance of disunion.

He refused the appointment because he considered himself compromised by the Bourbon régime and ill-suited to guide others without the self-deception he believed political leadership required. He described his generation as caught between old and new worlds, and argued that the country now needed younger men able to combine personal interests with public ideals. In place of himself, he recommended Sedàra: a man with power and practical merits, whose conduct during the May crisis had been useful and who could create political illusions when required. The recommendation recognizes Sedàra’s fitness for the emerging system even as it exposes the Prince’s contempt for its compromises. A later account confirms that Sedàra did enter the Senate, ten years afterward.

The ballroom: resentment, kinship, and recognition

At the ball, Sedàra appraised the gilded room in terms of its monetary worth, remarking on the cost of gold leaf. The Prince, who saw the room through its faded beauty and its association with a vanishing world, felt sudden loathing. He connected the rise of Sedàra and others like him with the decay of the palaces and with the greed and resentment he believed accompanied their ascent. Yet he checked his impulse to rebuke him: Sedàra was a guest, Angelica’s father, and perhaps as unhappy as anyone else.

As Tancredi and Angelica danced, the Prince saw their youth and mutual absorption rather than only the interests and ambitions surrounding their union. Their moment softened his disgust. He came to feel compassion for the ballroom’s people, including those whose values he disliked, because they belonged to the same mortal, temporary world. He also recognized the assembled aristocrats as his own stock, people among whom he could feel at ease despite their faults. This recognition does not erase his judgment of Sedàra’s materialism, but it changes the emotional terms of their conflict: class difference remains, while shared family ties and shared vulnerability make pure hostility untenable.

The relationship therefore registers both continuity and replacement. The Prince’s rank and habits retain their force in private and familial life, while Sedàra’s wealth, political usefulness, and eventual Senate position mark the new elite’s public advance. Their connection through Tancredi and Angelica gives that historical shift a household form: the old order does not simply vanish, and the new one does not enter without friction, but the two become bound together even as the Prince watches their worlds diverge.